OT - WTF - Knicks hire Isiah
As a Knicks fan, there is no level of face palm or corresponding poster that can express my feelings regarding this move.
http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/nba/news/story?id=5442858
He's been hired as a consultant -- maybe on sexual harassment issues?
August 7th, 2010 at 11:01 AM ^
...he's going to teach the execs how to sexaully harass, get away with it, and then walk away with millions in severance pay. The knicks should change their name to The KNUCKLEHEADS.
The guy would screw up a 2-car funeral parade.
This comparison is definitely unfair to Mr. Gardner. I've yet to see Dolan restore our nation's confidence in the president's economic policies.
... a lot of dirt on somebody in the Knicks org. This makes no sense, at all. I also imagine that FIU is not too thrilled by this, either.
I was really confused when I saw this as I thought he was being hired as the Head Coach again. Still an odd situation, but much less embarassing than I originally thought.
Even weirder is that he's still going to be FIU's coach. How is he going to pull that off?
I thought Isiah Thompson was FIU's basketball coach?
August 7th, 2010 at 11:02 AM ^
Very simply done by tweeting his consult ideas. He'll never have to leave his office.
would disguise hush money like this...ridiculous.
Interesting offseason for David Stern and the NBA; I can't imagine that product becoming any less relevant.
Matt Millen has been hired as a talent evaluation consultant by the Detroit Lions.
He will remain in his role as a broadcaster on ESPN.
August 7th, 2010 at 11:59 AM ^
You could "consult" better than Isiah too. He has the opposite of a Midas Touch, except for his own wallet.
Dude was a terrible GM and a terrible person/great potential politician, but he did ok spotting talent with the few draft picks he didn't throw away (e.g., David Lee, Wilson Chandler). I'm assuming they may use him as a consultant primarily for this purpose.
Or it might be a continuation of this experiment:
http://www.theonion.com/articles/isiah-thomas-my-time-with-the-knicks-w…
WCF was also one of the nefarious minds behind a large-scale psychological experiment on an apparently captive group. It ended when, stunningly, some of the participants actually stopped buying tickets.
Millen's Lions Era vs Thomas Knicks.........Lusitania vs Andrea Doria.......new Coke vs Gatorade Tiger................beta vs 8 track......................Hindenburg v Spruce Goose.....
I see where you are going, but Millen really should stand on his own; he blows away any GM analogy. Thomas was a bad GM; Millen was historically bad and it can easily be argued that he is the worst GM in the history of professional sports. To wit:
Knicks in the 3 years pre-Isiah: 48-34 (playoffs; lost 1st rd); 30-52; 37-45.
Knicks during Isiah GM years: 39-43 (playoffs; lost 1st rd); 33-49; 23-59; 33-49; 23-59)
Lions in the 3 years pre-Millen: 5-11; 8-8 (playoffs; lost 1st rd); 9-7
Lions in the Millen years: 2-14; 3-13; 5-11; 6-10; 5-11; 3-13; 7-9; 0-16 (and yes, he gets all of the zero win season, as those were all his players).
That's a 37% winning pct (which is bad) vs a 24% winning pct (which is historically, epically bad).
Isiah took a franchise that had recently been struggling and made the struggle worse; Millen took a franchise that was thoroughly mediocre and drove them into the groud, making them the worst franchise in the last 50 years in all four major professional leagues (except maybe the Clippers; seriously, try to think of someone worse in terms of playoff wins and horifically bad seasons).
If you can't tell, I despise Millen I can't believe he still works in any field related to football. Any color commentary he does, if it remotely wanders away from analyzing the play on the field (e.g., discussing the makeup of a roster) is de facto invalid.
Even that assessment is arguably charitable to Millen. The Lions made the playoffs over half the time in the 1990s and went 9-7 (losing on a last-second FG) to just miss the postseason the year before Millen arrived - in a league in which only 12 of 32 teams make the playoffs. They were better than mediocre; they were actually pretty good. Then Millen came in and brought total ruin to the franchise.
I largely agree on the 90s (thanks Barry!), but anyone can have a prety good (or pretty bad) decade. I used mediocre b/c they had just one playoff win, which I haven't looked up, but I'm guessing is middle of the pack for the time period. They did make the playoffs basically every other year.
But two things happened in the 00s which put the Lions from "ehh, somewhat decent performance" to "wow, there's no one worse." 1) Millen and 2) The Cardinals going to the Super Bowll in 2008 season. Both had won a single playoff game in ~50 years (though the Lions at least made it far more often, albeit flaming out every time, save 1991), and you could always say the Cards were a worse franchise. But in the last two years, the Cardinals have won 4 playoff games (and almost won the Super Bowl).
Thanks to Millen, the Lions stand alone - if one can stand when you're at the bottom of the heap.
The Lions would have made the playoffs. That is, if Stoney Case hadn't thrown a pick-six and lost a fumble in the last seven minutes of the Christmas Eve game against Da Bears, Moeller would have remained the coach, and the WTF decision to put a color commentator in charge of an NFL football team would not have happened (at least in 2001).
As it is, Gary Moeller (5-4) remains the only winning Lions coach since Joe Schmidt in the early 70's.
I still have a few copies of the Lions preseason program, the cover of which features Matt Millen and Marty Mornhinweg towering over a mob of faceless, helmeted Lions organisms, supreme in their ability to "turn around" a team that almost didn't need turning around...
August 7th, 2010 at 10:49 AM ^
I agree that on the field, Millen put together one of the worst records of all time.......but the idea of interns as sex toys for players brings the Isiah era down to the Millen level.
"Hi, I'm Isiah Thomas, if you come play for me at FIU, I will gaurantee you play in the NBA, because I will draft you."
Yup nothing fishy here, I heard some kids are practicing to hard in the midwest though, let's go crack the whip there.
And that last quote in the article seemed a bit strange too:
"I'm excited to work with the Knicks again," Thomas said. "I wish my mom was still alive to see this."
Was Isiah's mom a Knicks fan?
I'd imagine she's a fan of her son and this might be a sense of vindication for her child if she were alive to witness it.
Kind of deserve each other.
(Does anybody know if OSU is looking for a consultant? - Isiah is probably open for another gig...)
NOTE: Being very sarcastic here.
"Isiah Thomas brings unique experience as a Hall of Fame player, coach, executive and owner, and we believe having him as part of our organization will be extremely beneficial to the team's success," Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan and team president Donnie Walsh announced jointly in a statement.
No, that is not a quote from 2003. That's today.
...that Isiah "plays it straight," because he is a world class con man. Better that he steal the Knicks' money than that of the general public.
I really feel for the OP. If a team I cheered for hired Isiah, it would cause me even more misery than being a Michigan fan through the last three years. At least as a Michigan fan, I had 47 years of being spoiled and can look forward to more of the same, possibly starting again this year. When Isiah is involved in the decision-making of any operation, though, there is nothing to look forward to except more misery.
August 7th, 2010 at 10:33 AM ^
I am also a long time Knicks fan and equally dumbfounded. It may be unprecedented in the history of sports that someone who brought this kind of destruction on a franchise was rehired by that team. He didn't just "oversee" the carnage, he caused it himself, personally.
The only bigger idiot in the picture is Dolan.